Scan 17
Musical Courier 1893-05-17: Vol 26 Iss 689, 1893
128 lines. Read by computer on 25 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 18. See the scan on archive.org.
1P. Gille are arranging the German libretto for the French stage. The leading rôle is assigned to Miss Emma Calvé.
3Wymann.—Miss Julie Wymann, a mezzo soprano, made her début lately at Lyons with success in the rôle of "Dalila," in Saint-Saëns' opera.
5Franchetti.—The composer Baron Franchetti has promised to write a symphonic composition for the Verdi Society of Venice, and also has engaged to compose a hymn on an Italian and Hebrew text for the inauguration of the grand synagogue of Venice after its restoration.
7A Beethoven MS.—Martin Krause, in looking through the treasures of an antiquary, has discovered the original autograph of Beethoven's "Moonlight" sonata. It is reported to differ in some details from the published version.
9Goltermann.—The Frankfort Opera celebrated May 1 the fortieth anniversary of the services of Mr. Goltermann. In addition to being the conductor of the Frankfort Opera he is a composer of talent, who has during his long career brought before the Frankfort public many of the latest works of French composers.
11Verdi and the Pope.—It is said that Pope Leo XIII., on hearing of the greeting extended to Verdi at Rome, exclaimed, "I should be glad to see this genius of Italian music." It is added that Maestro Mustafa, the last surviving musico, and director of the Sixtine Chapel, has been commissioned to express to Verdi the manifest desire of the Pope.
13Berlioz in Milan.—The "Damnation de Faust" was given at the Dal Verme, in a concert, not in oratorio form. This first performance in Italy created profound emotion among artists, and enthusiastic admiration among the public.
15Who is Josef Töpfer.—The Leipzic "Musikalischer Wochenblatt" says that Josef Töpfer has become director of the Zittau Musikschule, and will transform it into a conservatory like that of Dresden. The same journal informs us that a Josef Töpfer two years ago confessed to have styled himself Hans Von der Maltz, and to have described himself as Hofpianist and teacher in the Stern Conservatory, and it wishes to know if the new director at Zittau is the same person. one of two readings
16Who is Josef Töpfer.—The Leipzic "Musikalisches Wochenblatt" says that Josef Töpfer has become director of the Zittau Musikschule, and will transform it into a conservatory like that of Dresden. The same journal informs us that a Josef Töpfer two years ago confessed to have styled himself Hans Von der Maltz, and to have described himself as Hofpianist and teacher in the Stern Conservatory, and it wishes to know if the new director at Zittau is the same person. one of two readings
18Hegner.—The little Otto Hegner has been displaying his productive talents in a mass for chorus, soli and orchestra, lately performed at Basel.
20Villiers Stanford.—The first opera of Villiers Stanford, "The Veiled Prophet," will be produced at Covent Garden Theatre, London, this season with the Italian text. The same composer is engaged in scoring the music for the libretto "Harold," written by Sir Ed. Mallet, English ambassador at Berlin.
22Moscow.—The Russian opera season at Moscow opened April 13 with Verdi's "Aida," which was followed later by Gounod's "Faust."
24A Worthy Charity.
26NEXT Tuesday evening a grand orchestral concert will be given in the Madison Square Garden Concert Hall for the benefit of the "'Tribune' Fresh Air Fund." The affair will be under the able direction of Carl V. Lachmund, the well-known pianist and conductor. Xaver Scharwenka will assist Mr. Lachmund. The orchestra will be composed of members of the Philharmonic and Seidl orchestras. The artists who are to participate are Emil Fischer, the well-known bass; Miss Etta Roehl, the dramatic soprano; E. C. Towne, the popular tenor; Rafael Diaz Albertini, the Spanish violin virtuoso, and several young lady pianists (pupils of Carl V. Lachmund).
28The program will embrace, among other novelties, a song with orchestra, composed by Carl V. Lachmund, to words by Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, and dedicated to the poet editor of the "Century Magazine."
30This song, however, is not new. It has been sung by Marianne Brandt a number of times, and also was sung at Weimar, when Liszt, requested it be repeated. Some "Italian sketches" for orchestra, by Mr. Lachmund, will be played. Among the piano numbers will be Liszt's E flat concerto, played by Miss Eloise Shryock.
32Many musicians are interested and patrons, while several prominent ladies, distinguished in art circles and charity work, comprise the list of patronesses.
34Mrs. Cleveland has a warm interest in the cause. Her secretary writes under date of April 26: "She sympathizes very fully with the work you are carrying on."
36Among the patrons and patronesses who have already subscribed are Messrs. Oswald Ottendorfer, A. W. Faber, Geo. H. Yeaman, Mesdames Henry Villard, L. Stewart, Richard Watson Gilder, W. M. Evarts, Henry C. Potter, Theo. Sutro, J. T. Zebley, W. C. Andrews, Roswell Smith, J. E. Alexandre, H. F. Dimick, Joseph H. Rylance, Jr., Joseph Alexandre, Reginald de Koven and others.
38"The enjoyment of our own summer will be the more complete if we take with us the consciousness of having done our mite toward allaying much wretchedness and illness, in aiding a change for the unfortunates who are tied to their stifling tenement dwellings." Reserve seats only $1.
40New York College Commencement.—The commencement exercises of the New York College of Music were held in Chickering Hall last Saturday evening in the presence of a large number of interested friends. The following program was presented:
42Piano solos—
43"Fileuse"……………………………………………..Raff
44"Nightingale"…………………………………………Liszt
45Mrs. H. Elsas.
46Piano solo, Prelude from Suite………………………..Raff
47Miss Florence Terrel.
48Cavatina, "Queen of Sheba"………………………….Gounod
49Ms Amelia Hirshfield.
50Sonata for two pianos (second movement)………….Mozart
51Lillie Seckendorf and Harry Graboff.
52Piano solo, Concerto C minor (first movement)…….Beethoven
53Miss Ritchie Caziar (with accompaniment of second piano.)
54Violin solo, Concerto No. 7 (first movement)………De Beriot
55Miss Emma Pilat.
56Concertstück, for piano…………………………….Reinecke
57"Miss Helena Augustin (with accompaniment of second piano.)"
58"Gypsy Life"…………………………………………Schumann
59Vocal Sight Reading Class.
61The work of the students was uniformly good, Miss Pilat in particular giving a remarkably fine performance. She plays with spirit, freedom and precision, but is hampered somewhat by a rather small tone. Lillie Seckendorf and Harry Graboff, two precocious little children, gave a very interesting performance. At the conclusion of the musical program the president, Everett P. Wheeler, made a short address, and then presented piano diplomas to Miss Jessie D. Shay and Miss Henriette D. Seckendorf, and a violin diploma to Mr. Arthur Temme. Medals were presented to Misses Frances Dyer, Ada Smith, Florence Wells and Mr. Durheimer, of the piano department, and Miss Pilat, of the violin school.
63Music in Boston.
65BOSTON, May 4, 1893.
67THE Cecilia, under the direction of Mr. Lang, gave the fourth concert of the seventeenth season in Music Hall the 11th. The concert was in illustration of "Music in Shakespeare's time and Shakespeare in Music." The part songs used in illustration were these:
69Lord, for thy tender mercies' sake……………………Farrant
70Matona, lovely maiden……………………………….Lassus
71Since first I saw your face……………………………Ford
72My bonny lass…………………………………………Morley
73Down in a flowery vale……………………………….Pesta one of two readings
74Down in a flowery vale……………………………….Festa one of two readings
75Fire, fire my heart……………………………………Morley
76Sigh no more, ladies…………………………………Stevens
77If she be made of white and red……………………..Nevin
78Ye spotted snakes……………………………………G. A. MacFarren
79How sweet the moonlight…………………………….Leslie
80Under the greenwood tree…………………………….Fenellosa
82Perhaps Shakespeare heard the first six of these part songs and perhaps he did not. The Cecilia claims that he might have heard them, and therefore they were sung last week at the Shakesperian concert. one of two readings
83Perhaps Shakespeare heard the first six of these part songs and perhaps he did not. The Cecilia claims that he might have heard them, and therefore they were sung last week at the Shakespearian concert. one of two readings
85We know from his plays that he was thoroughly acquainted with bacchanalian and slang songs, and it is not unlikely that he often roused the night owl in a catch that would "draw three souls out of one weaver." He put into the mouth of Sir Toby Belch snatches of songs that would certainly bring a blush to the cheek of the modern young person. He gives a scurry tune to Stephano. If he loved a song "old and plain, that dallies with the innocence of love," he also knew the music that Othello, according to the clown, so liked that he desired the musicians "for love's sake to make no more noise with it."
87How delightful is much of the vocal music of Shakespeare's day, even now, when the hearer, accustomed to endless successions of dissonances, is tempted to cry out against the apparent simplicity of the ancients, until he examines the cunning contrapuntal structure made beautiful by the display of the knowledge of vocal art. The English of later years are more conventional in their treatment of part songs: there are honored modern names, as G. A. Macfarren and Robert Lucas Pearsall, that restless amateur, who, wandering from town to town, wrote madrigals and talked of them until death found him in his castle on the Lake of Constance. But the Englishmen of 1893, be-doctored and otherwise be-titled, plough along sedately in the old and familiar ruts of cold, correct harmony; or they dream of possible oratorios, "Aholah and Aholibah," or a sacred cantata treating of the woman arrayed in purple and scarlet color, whom John saw sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast. And yet it does not seem that there are enough characters in the Bible, gay or solemn, to go round among the horde of English Doctors of Music.
89But England in Shakespeare's time was a singing nation. The laborers and the handicraftsmen ruled by Queen Bess sang as they worked, as sang "the spinsters and the knitters in the sun." What did Fletcher say? "Never trust a tailor that does not sing at his work, for his mind is of nothing but filching."
91I know not how it is in New York, but here labor is unaccompanied by song. If a conservative Bostonian should surprise his tailor in a vocal burst he would suspect alcoholic stimulation; he might not accuse him boldly of intoxication, but he would mentally charge him with undue incalculance and feverish aetuation.
93The French still have street cries, and many were noted in music by Kastner. They are very old, these calls, very old. They go beyond the time of Henry of Navarre, and some, confounded or synonymous with plain-song, were heard in the mists of antiquity.
95The Grand Monarch no doubt lent them gracious condescension.
97They sounded in the ears of the Marquis de Sade as he sighed after the lost books of Elephantis and meditated on Heliogabalian enormity.
99They rose mingled with horrid jests to the pallid guests of the guillotine, while the avenging women sat below and knitted and knitted.
101Nor were they drowned in the booming of German cannon without the city walls.
103I am told that the people of London town are invited with musical vehemence to purchase muffins, cat's meat, primroses and mackerel. In Boston we have only the wild shriek of the huckster of oranges or strawberries. Why should our workmen and errand boys ply their calling in morose silence? Each occupation should have at least a characteristic musical phrase.
105Then might the messenger of leaden heels appease a wrathful humorist by the boyish freshness of an ironical presto.
107Then might the seller of cucumbers accompany his acceptance and delivery with the initial strains of a dead march.
109And even the plumber, that grim man, might then herald his approach by a soothing and a conciliatory tune.
111But I have wandered far from the Cecilia.
113The tempos taken by Mr. Lang were in certain instances open to dispute, but the performance of the chorus was admirable; there was such purity as well as fullness of tone; there was such a balance of parts; there was such an appreciation of nuances.
115The part song by Ethelbert Nevin, composed for the Cecilia, is a delightful fancy. Its quaintness is not affectation; there is no palpable attempt to imitate the expression of a buried generation that long ago became a part of the kindly, absorbing earth. Yet the little part song suggests starlighted gardens with trees fashioned into strange beasts and birds; fountains that splash or whisper as though independent of the mechanic, man; lovers, whose blood is not so hot that death follows rejection and to whom jealousy is a pleasing and ephemeral emotion.
117And what, pray, has Bach's Italian concerto to do with Shakespeare? Yet Miss Fanny Richter played it, and it seemed lugged in as by the heels. She played it as though she were accomplishing a task and without a keen sense of rhythm.
119Here was a sweltering night and the concert was chiefly given up to part songs. The audience was dosed with Bach, just as on a warm morning of spring a prudent mother physics her brood for fear lest her children may possibly be ill during the summer. Bach as a blood purifier!
121There should be a musical calendar carefully prepared by a committee appointed by the mayor of the city. Bach should not be played in a month without an R. A man that listens gladly to the Great Cantor in July changes his flannels the 1st of May and the 1st of November without heed of the weather, and eats oatmeal for breakfast throughout the year as a sanitary duty.
123There is summer music and there is winter music.
125There are nocturnes and preludes of Chopin which are a part of the "mad naked summer night! still nodding night!" But we barbarians sit and hear them in December, played by a male or female barbarian in a stifling concert hall; steam and electricity, the smell of warm overshoes and of dripping umbrellas, accentuate the musical enjoyment, and we talk knowingly of the temperament of the player and the perfume of the nocturne.
127Field is a man of summer, "Lakmé" should be given in summer, and only on summer nights when the movable roof would allow the hearer to look up at a feverish sky. "Sylvia" should be danced in summer, and Massenet's "Eve"
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